Biography
María Conchita Alonso is a Cuban-born Venezuelan-American actress and singer. Born María Concepción Alonso Bustillo on 29 June 1955 in Cienfuegos, Cuba, she was raised in Venezuela and began her career as a singer and beauty pageant contestant, winning Miss Teenager World in 1971 and placing as a runner-up in Miss Venezuela 1975.
She appeared in ten telenovelas and Venezuelan films before emigrating to the United States in 1982. Her Hollywood debut came in Moscow on the Hudson (1984). Subsequent film roles include The Running Man (1987), Extreme Prejudice (1987), Colors (1988), Predator 2 (1990) as Leona Cantrell, and The House of the Spirits (1993). She received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Female Lead for Caught (1996) and has three Grammy Award nominations for her music. In 1995 she starred in the Broadway musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, the first Latin American actress not born in the United States to do so.
